My style tends to be more dramatic. I search for the shadows and the contrast and focus on the emotion.
During a convention at the Irving Convention Center, I was able to grab a couple quick shots of OMG Cosplay in her Mercy cosplay.
As you can see in the photo below, it was an over cast day with plenty of clouds, but the background was too bright in order to capture them. The building itself created a lot of shade making it difficult to use natural light and acheive the look we wanted.
If I set my exposure for the mid tones, then my subject would be too dark and the background too bright. If I exposed for the clouds, then my subject would be way too dark.
In order to balance this out I used a single monolight with a beauty dish as my key light. First I exposed for the cloud and set my exposure to get a lot of detail and contrast. Generally this means lowering by an f stop.
Settings for this shot are:
f/22, ISO 100, 1/125th
Next I set my flash power to match that exposure. This took a couple test shots, but with a light meter I was able to dial it in pretty quickly.
There were people around us, along with trash cans, tables, chairs and parts of the buiildin so I lowered down and did a closer crop in order to get a clean shot.
Since I was shooting at a lower angle, I had her lean forward at the waist in order to avoid any foreshortening. I was shooting with my 70 – 200 lens at 88mm.
In post production I smoothed the skin and hair, but the background is straight out of camera.
